Originally written February 5, 2018

I’ll admit, as someone that watches a lot of movies, it’s hard for me to truly be impressed by originality anymore. Originality isn’t needed to make a great movie, but I just feel like when I see great movies anymore, it’s not necessarily because of originality that I’m impressed. I just feel like most things have already been done in some form or another, so I’m always able to compare something to something else. However, Fantasia is that rare movie that comes along where I watch it and I’m completely blown away, because I’ve truly never seen anything like it. After watching it, I had a hard time believing that it existed in the first place, and that I’ve never seen it.

Whether you consider this a praise or a criticism (I’m not intending it to be either, just a statement of fact), one of the reasons why Fantasia is so original is because it barely registers as a movie to begin with. The movie opens with an orchestra of musicians (real musicians, mind you, not animated ones) walking onto a stage. We are given a narration stating that what we’re about to see is a number of classical music pieces being performed. The catch is that Disney animators have listened to these pieces and have animated scenes that they feel go along with the music. So, the entire movie is quite literally watching a classical music concert, with Disney animations that go along with it. As I said, this kind of stretches the boundaries of what a movie is, so it’s understandable that it might not be everyone’s cup of tea. However, I try my hardest to judge a movie not on what it’s trying to do, but how well it’s accomplished what it’s trying to do. In that sense, Fantasia is remarkable.

While I was watching Fantasia, I noticed something. To watch the movie “properly,” you actually have to watch it in the opposite way you would normally watch a movie. Typically when I’m watching a movie, I’m paying attention to the events on screen, and having the music accompany those events to add to the overall atmosphere and feelings associated with the scene. However, Fantasia is quite literally the opposite, and so to get what I feel is the intended effect of the movie, you have to try to watch it the opposite way. That is, the music itself is supposed to be the focus, with the visuals accompanying them to add to the overall atmosphere and feelings associated with the piece. It’s interesting because at times I found myself reverting into how I would normally watch a movie, and I felt like the magic was lost a bit when I would make the animation my primary focus. Rather, it was when I was experiencing the music and letting the visuals flow in front of me that I got truly immersed in Fantasia.

Not even the most groundbreaking films are exempt from criticism, however. For all of its strengths, I think that even a movie as original as Fantasia succumbs to a few issues. For starters, it falls into that classic problem that “anthology” (for lack of a better word) movies fall into. When you have a movie that consists of segments rather than one whole piece, some are bound to be more enjoyable than others, which I found to be the case here. The narrator explains in the beginning that some of the pieces tell clear stories while others are left up to the imagination a bit. I actually found the more abstract pieces to be the more enjoyable sections, because it let the animators get really creative with what they wanted to present. The first piece in particular is a great example of this. All you’re seeing for a lot of it is just different colors flashing across the screen, with movements happening to the different noises happening in the song. I found that Fantasia works best when it’s allowed to just roam free like this. It was when it was telling more of a clear-cut story that I ran into the problem I mentioned earlier, where I was watching it more as I would any other traditional movie rather than letting the animation take on the accompanying role. The other problem I have with Fantasia is that at a run-time of over 2 hours, I found it to go on a little too long. It’s funny because this is how I tend to feel at most orchestral concerts anyway. I like my Disney movies on the shorter end in general, but with a movie like this I feel like it’s better to err on the side of not overstaying your welcome so that the magic of what it is isn’t lost. Unfortunately, by the time Fantasia was over, I was already a bit over it. The movie really grabs your attention in the beginning, but it did slightly lose its appeal along the way.

However, despite those two criticisms, I think that what’s good about Fantasia far overshadows what isn’t. Despite its more specific problems, I think that the biggest barrier to Fantasia for most people will just be accepting it for what it is in the first place. I know that many people like Disney movies for an animated family adventure full of whimsical characters, and that just isn’t what Fantasia is. In fact, I had someone tell me that the movie always bored them as a kid, and I can completely understand that because I don’t think this kind of movie is for kids. Whereas most Disney movies are accessible to both kids and adults, I think that Fantasia is mostly for adults, and even then there will be plenty of adults that don’t like it because it’s not a traditional kind of movie. However, like I said, I love Fantasia for what it is. I rarely get to see movies that blow me away like this did. I welcome any time a movie is willing to push the boundaries of the medium, and so I fully appreciate what the movie was setting out to do. I think it slightly fumbles at times, but the effort that went into it far overshadows any shortcomings it has. If you want a truly unique movie experience, Fantasia is where it’s at.

4.5/5